Pick the lock, p.31
Pick the Lock,
p.31
Gemma is in my room, holding her stolen iPad, watching the home movie mixtape I queued up for her—the one where we were ten and eleven and did back dives for a whole hour just to see if we could. Because that’s how Gemma made me feel. Like doing a back dive. Over and over. I can’t wait to have a normal life now and maybe even kiss someone like a normal seventeen-year-old. I want to fall in love. I can’t remember ever wanting to fall in love before. I don’t think love can breathe in a space of hate.
* * *
—
Hate is now in a pile of plexiglass in the driveway. Marta has opened the windows and doors—freshness is pushing the prison air out of the study. I open the heavy velvet curtains. I say, “Can we change the décor, please?” to no one in particular.
The hairs on my neck stand up.
Finch answers, “I suppose you think you’ll be getting the house now.”
She’s sitting at my old desk, tapping her fingers on the table.
“You’re unhinged,” I say.
She nods.
“You don’t scare me,” I say.
*poof!*
Brutus scurries out the open doors to the patio.
Marta’s Mashed Potatoes
Marta makes a roast chicken, her mashed potatoes, and carrots, and because Milorad asked her to, some turnips.
“Strong food for the mind,” he said.
While dinner gets made, Milorad calls for a firepit night. He starts to move the patio furniture into a circle. Henry and I help. I am on a mission to find the seat cushions for the two benches. Henry hauls wood and fills the brass log holder.
“When you go to Slovenia, will you come back?” Henry asks him.
“Of course! If I am allowed to stay here, I will stay here. We are family.”
Henry hugs him.
“Will you take Brutus with you on vacation?” I ask.
Milorad doesn’t answer.
BRUTUS’S COCKY PROMISE
Never corner a rat.
If I visit with you, you dare not tell anyone lest they think you brought it on yourself. The best destruction I ever did is in your saccharine mind—making you believe that I am not real. It was an easy deed. I simply told you lies about the good in people and how the best of us only look for that. This left all the bad in people free to take over the world.
And they did.
Now good and evil live side by side, but the good can’t point out the evil without looking bad, and the evil doesn’t need to do anything but devour. Chew with his mouth open, brag to his friends about how he hit that bitch, shut that little fucker up, gave her what she came for. I am the story everyone will tell you is impossible. And yet, I am fed and watered and I get homemade treats and toys and someone cleans up my shit from the bottom of my cage.
I trained you.
I trained all of you.
You think shuttling women around in tubes is bad?
You’ve seen nothing yet.
We control the world. You are peons.
See how I run as the stupid Serb chases me? With a brick, with a golf club, with a bat, with a tennis racquet, with his bare hands. I am mocking you and your running—from reality, from the way the world is about to fall on you—from icebergs to dirty politicians, you just put ketchup on it and eat it like fries and hamburgers.
See how he’ll never catch me?
How slow he is?
See how pathetic?
How he thinks he can outsmart me?
See how stupid, running in circles?
How confused you are because we called ourselves myths? And you told every little child that monsters didn’t exist?
See how we did it?
From right under your bed?
How you can’t change it?
How you chase your own tail?
See how he corners me between the pool house and the pump house?
How even then he can’t hit the target?
How—
Home movie—Rh.rn. (Right Here. Right Now.)
Milorad is filling the patio firepit with wood. It’s a warm night. He has music playing and two propane heaters out there as well. Cozy pillows and blankets on the couches.
“We will burn things tonight,” he says to me.
Marta has closed all the windows and is doing the dishes with Mother.
EXT. PATIO—NIGHT
MINA, MARTA, GEMMA, MILORAD, HENRY, and JANE sit around a blazing fire on the patio. They are playing charades.
JANE
You next, Henry!
Henry stands and acts out eating. The others call out guesses. He points inside toward the dining room.
GEMMA
No pointing allowed!
Henry acts out digging a potato, then washing it, peeling it, boiling it, then mashing it.
MARTA
My mashed potatoes!
HENRY
Bingo!
MARTA
Me next!
Marta stands. They play another round of charades. (Actors, make this different every night of the production. You’re welcome.)
MINA
I guess this is what we’re doing for spring break.
HENRY
I like it.
Milorad stands. Henry looks excited.
HENRY (CONT’D)
Your turn! Yes!
Milorad puts two logs on the fire and the flames jump. He then approaches the pool and grabs the skimmer from its hook on the outer wall of the pool house.
Jane gets up from the sofa and walks toward the kitchen door.
MINA (to Jane)
Where are you going?
Jane holds up her finger and goes into the house. Milorad begins to skim the pool.
I return with my red ukulele and Mother’s guitar. She takes hers from me and strums it and tunes it. I do the same with my uke. Then I play a chord and she matches it, then she plays a chord and I match it, getting a few notes wrong along the way.
“How about ‘Pick the Lock’ gets a darker feel?” she says, “Like this?” She plays a chord that’s like “Servitude” by Fishbone—daunting. Some birthday wishes come true.
Milorad is over by the pool, working.
“Milorad!” I coo. “Stop working and come sit. You haven’t given us a charade yet!”
He waves with his free hand as if I’d just called his name from across a busy street. You can see in his eyes he is somewhere else. Maybe on the Dragon Bridge in Ljubljana. Maybe back on his farm in Serbia, which he has never told us about.
EXT. PATIO—NIGHT
Henry and Milorad are over by the pool, where Milorad is skimming the pool water, which is about two feet below the usual waterline. Henry and Milorad see something in the pool. Henry points. Milorad nods and dips the pool skimmer.
JANE
Stop working, you two! This is supposed to be a party!
MINA
I think they found something.
MARTA
Oh God.
GEMMA
I hope it’s not snakes. It’s the one thing I can’t handle.
JANE
Oh man. Remember all the snakes that one year?
GEMMA
That’s what I’m talking about.
MARTA
Oh God.
Milorad has something in the net. He and Henry look at it and then look at each other. They seem to be discussing what to do with it. Milorad points toward the firepit. Henry looks over, a thinking frown on his face.
Milorad says, “Stand back.”
All of us lean forward, though, to see what’s in his net.
It’s a rat, of course—drowned and dead—not just any rat either.
In one motion, he dumps Brutus onto the fire and rather than fizzle out and pop and crack with added water, the fire roars up and burns enormous.
We all sit back. Mother continues strumming her guitar. I continue strumming my uke. Milorad returns the pool skimmer to its hooks on the side of the pool house. Henry sits by the firepit with the iron poker and pokes the rat, over and over, as if he’s making sure it’s dead.
The tree frogs in the hothouse match our chords as we strum.
Natural as singing. Natural as dying.
I look at the scene from on top of the pool house—from on top of the town, from space, a bird’s eye—and I see us, a family who has freed itself from something both terrible and fascinating.
How easily tricked we can be. How easily influenced. How mean.
How simply honest we can be. How beautifully influenced. How kind.
I will sing songs about it forever.
Acknowledgments
Books do not write themselves. This one, especially. I owe thanks.
At Dutton—Andrew, we count things in decades now, and I love that for us. Julie, Carmela and Venessa, Anna, Theresa, Kristie, Natalie, Rob, Kaitlin, and every single team at Penguin Random that works so hard to put books into the world, thank you. A toast to Anne, the best damn copyeditor in the galaxy.
Michael Bourret, I tell everyone I have the best agent. I do not lie.
Big thanks and love to David Macinnis Gill for holding my hand through this book. And to Cory McCarthy and Martha Brockenbrough and e. E. Charlton-Trujillo for minding me like good siblings. And to Beth Zimmerman for walking with me through some very serious days, hoo boy. And to Jax for being so damn solid. Friends, family, and every good neighbor, you know who you are—thank you for helping me get this book done with your generosity and kindness. I love you.
Andrea, Jane, Jennifer, and Diane—I am so grateful. (People, thank your therapists.)
Thank you to every teacher, to every librarian, to every bookseller who puts my books in the hands of the readers who need them. Special shout-out to Lauryn Hill for “Forgive Them Father,” where I first understood that everyday people lie to God.
Listen. Domestic violence is a common reality. Falling in love with an abuser can happen to anyone and it’s far more nuanced and complicated than it looks from the outside. What matters is that you know: You deserve authentic love—the verb. Love that allows you to ask questions, share ideas, and communicate so it stays. Safe love. Love that doesn’t lie. Love that doesn’t betray. Love that doesn’t hurt. You’re worth it. I promise.
About the Author
A.S. King is the award-winning author of many acclaimed books for young readers. Her novel Dig won the 2020 Michael L. Printz Award, and Ask The Passengers won the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The New York Times called her “one of the best YA writers working today.” In 2022, she was awarded the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for her significant contribution to YA literature. King lives with her family in Pennsylvania, where she returned after living on a farm and teaching adult literacy in Ireland for more than a decade. www.as-king.com
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A.S. King, Pick the Lock
